Epilogue
The church was smaller than the one Maria had grown up attending in Boston, but she thought, standing at the back of it with her hand tucked into her father's arm, that she'd never seen one so full of people so eager to be there.
Her father had come, just as Mrs. Carrow had promised he would, complaining the whole train ride about the coffee and loving every minute of it, exactly as predicted.
He'd arrived three days earlier, embraced her so hard she'd nearly lost her breath, and spent every day since telling anyone who'd listen what a fine store his daughter had found herself attached to.
"Ready?" he asked her now, and Maria looked down the aisle to where Samson stood waiting, dressed in the same suit that had never quite fit him right, Billy and Meg beside him, both scrubbed and combed within an inch of their patience.
"Ready," she said.
The walk down the aisle felt shorter than she'd imagined it would, every face she passed familiar now in a way that still surprised her, Mrs. Elizabeth dabbing at her eyes, Mrs. Dutton beaming, half the town crowded into pews meant for a third as many people.
By the time she reached the front, Samson's face had gone soft in a way she'd only seen once or twice before, and she found herself smiling so hard her cheeks ached with it.
The ceremony passed in a blur of familiar words and unfamiliar feeling, and Maria remembered afterward only pieces of it.
Billy fidgeting until Meg elbowed him still.
The preacher's voice, warm and unhurried.
Samson's hand, steady around hers, the same hand that had held the reins that first day, driving her through a town she hadn't yet learned to call home.
"You may kiss your bride," the preacher said, and Samson didn't wait for the words to finish landing.
He kissed her the way he had that afternoon in the store, sure of himself, sure of her, and the church erupted into applause and a few whoops that could only have come from Billy.
Maria laughed against his mouth, unable to help it, and felt him smiling too, both of them too happy to manage anything more solemn.
When they finally broke apart, Meg had already crossed to them, tugging at Maria's sleeve.
"Does this mean I can call you Mama now?" she asked, quieter than her usual certainty, something hopeful and uncertain both at once in the question.
Maria knelt down to meet her properly. "Only if you'd like to."
Meg considered this a moment, then nodded, and threw her arms around Maria's neck, and Billy, not to be left out, crashed into the both of them a second later, and Samson, watching his family gathered together in front of the whole town, felt something settle in his chest that had been unsettled for longer than he cared to count.
Outside, the hills beyond Mason's Clear had gone gold with the afternoon sun, green and rolling and nothing at all like the desert Maria had once imagined waiting for her out west, and she thought, walking out of the church on her husband's arm, that she had never once regretted the leaving, not truly, not when it had brought her here.
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